The Boston Massacre Trial: Politics & Performance?

Reconsidering the Boston Massacre – Part IV If the shooting on King Street was chaos, the trials that followed were something else entirely—carefully staged, deeply political, and just as consequential. From the start, this wasn’t only about guilt or innocence. It was about perception—who could claim the moral high ground, not just in Boston, but […]

Paul Revere’s Depiction of the Boston Massacre – Confusion and Conspiracies

Reconsidering the Boston Massacre – Part III Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre is one of the most famous images from 18th-century America—but it is not a neutral snapshot of what happened. And that’s really the place to start: this is not a photograph of a street scene. It’s a story. Revere wasn’t trying […]

In the Boston Massacre, Did British Soldiers and Colonists Know Each Other?

Reconsidering the Boston Massacre – Part II One of the most revealing and underappreciated layers of the Boston Massacre story is just how socially entangled British troops and Boston residents were before the shooting on King Street. It’s easy to imagine a rigid divide — angry townsfolk on one side and “British soldiers on the […]

Was the Boston Massacre Really a “Massacre”?

Reconsidering the Boston Massacre – Part I When we think of the Boston Massacre—which likely reflects what we learned in school and college—the word “massacre” immediately stands out. It evokes tragedy. It carries weight. It paints the British as ruthless tyrants who slaughtered innocent American colonists. But the reality is far more complicated. In part […]

The Enlightenment and the Power of Thinking

Intellectual Foundations of the American Revolution — Part V At its core, the Enlightenment encouraged people to step back and examine not just what they believe, but why they believe it. In essence, the Enlightenment was a revolution in “thinking about thinking” How “Thinking About Thinking” Shaped Revolutionary Perspectives As AAR’s guest scholar, Dr. Sophia […]

Use and Misuse of ‘common sense’

Intellectual Foundations of the American Revolution — Part IV Common sense (not Common Sense by Thomas Paine), as AAR’s guest scholar, Dr. Sophia Rosenfeld explains, is a more basic, instinctive form of understanding—what we naturally perceive or experience—while reason builds on it to reach higher-level conclusions through logic and inference. In the 18th century, common […]

The Enlightenment and the American Revolution: What Was the Impact?

Intellectual Foundations of the American Revolution — Part III The Enlightenment played a significant—but not exclusive—role in shaping the American Revolution, especially among its leading thinkers. Figures like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison drew on Enlightenment ideas, but blended them with other intellectual and political traditions. Concepts such as natural rights and the pursuit of […]

Age of Enlightenment, Reason, and Revolution

Intellectual Foundations of the American Revolution — Part II The Enlightenment is often called the “Age of Reason,” but that label only tells part of the story. While thinkers emphasized logic and skepticism—building on earlier figures like René Descartes—they also recognized that reason alone could be misleading if it wasn’t grounded in real-world observation. Unlike […]

The Enlightenment Is Hard to Define

Intellectual Foundations of the American Revolution — Part I The Enlightenment is not as easy to define as we might expect—largely because the term itself was rarely used by the very thinkers we now group under it. In many ways, “the Enlightenment” is a label applied after the fact, used to describe a broad intellectual […]